Andy McCarthy takes a dive:
The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society. In this he is no different from his allies like the Congressional Black Caucus and Bill Ayers, who have shown themselves perfectly comfortable with Castro and Chàvez. Indeed, he is the product of a hard-Left tradition that apologized for Stalin and was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists (and that, in Soros parlance, saw George Bush as a bigger terrorist than bin Laden).
And then a follow-up:
As between freedom and dictatorship, in principle Obama is fine with dictatorship — we are seeing less and less freedom in our own country, and I believe Obama (who is dirigiste by nature) values stability over the rambunctiousness of a free society. He has certain values, and while he’d be delighted to have a free society arrive at them, he’d rather see them imposed if the alternative was a free society likely to shun them.
As for “anti-American,” I think Obama’s sense of the term is different from yours and mine. Obama agrees with a lot of the anti-Americanism that we hear from both apologists for radical Islam and the Left (many of whom are the same people). While the mullahs may be “anti-American” as we understand that term, Obama doesn’t think they would be resolutely anti the America that he intends to shape. I think he sincerely believes he could deal with the mullahs and make them less anti-American than they now are, once they realize how he is reversing a lot of what offends them (and him) about America.
While some of the judges are giving these dives a perfect score, I must admit that I am not impressed with the degree of difficulty. Charges of anti-Americanism are such a time-tested smear that these are near automatic as a forward dive from the pike position, and nothing new or innovative was really attempted.
I am also docking 1.0 for execution. -.5 for failing to mention the name Sotero, and -.5 for failing to include ACORN.
A solid effort, all in all, but I am not as impressed as some.
Also, how is that birth certificate thing working out?
cleek
is there anyone dumber than McCarthy ? he makes even Goldberg look like Larison.
chopper
he went for the triple-double, you gotta give him credit.
Joshua Norton
I haven’t seen such a public descent into madness since Lady Macbeth.
Will Danz
Same old nonsensical drivel as always.
Basically, the NRO template: pick up a handful of poo, throw it at Democrat. Repeat.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
What does “dirigiste by nature” mean?
valdivia
sorry to go back to first principles here but how exactly do we *know* that this McCarthy fellow actually loves America? I have seen no proof so until I do I am assuming he is a sleeper agent of some fascist regime.
Bill E Pilgrim
If he thinks that Obama is a man of the “hard left” then this guy is definitely a man of the hairpin right, ay yi yi. I just read the whole thing and was looking for the dramamine.
What’s most amazing is McCarthy’s got Obama on the side of the “mullahs”, but secretely, McCarthy presumably first having driven his bat mobile straight through Jonah Goldfinger’s crazy carwash of historical terms turned insane and come out with the idea that Obama’s hard leftism loves the current regime because…. of its hardness, or something, since of course left and right are exactly the same if you pony up for the wax and detailing..
Ouch. They really need to supply air bags at that site. Or air sick bags.
Both.
John Cole
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Fancy word for (in McCarthy’s mind) for socialist.
What will be funny is watching the d-list wingnuts in the blogosphere start to use the word (incorrectly, you can bet) now that they have been exposed to it at the NRO.
Col. Klink
He left out the phrase ‘Supreme Leader Hussein Obama’. Minus 10 points.
P.S. Is Obama Shia, Sunni or a hybrid all-encompasing Shyunni in wingnut circles? I could never figure that one out.
valdivia
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
he wants to boss you around that is what. don’t you know all democrats, but especially Obama, is an authoritarian type who likes to order people’s lives in a totalitarian way while only the conservatives are freedom types?
Legalize
This is the kind of wingnuttery that can land a man a weekly op-ed at the Washington Post!
JenJen
Speaking of wingnutz…
ZOMG teh ABC Bias!!
gocart mozart
Yeah but he does throw in the obligatory Chavez, Soros and Ayers and kicks it old school with Castro. He should get extra bonus points for giving props to the Congressional Black Caucus. Nobody talks about them anymore.
dmsilev
It fails on some of the compulsory elements. No mention of fascism, though he gets a few compensatory points for mentioning a series of specific socialists. There’s a complete omission of the Outrage Du Jour, that Obama dared to eat ice cream with his daughters this weekend. As you say, ACORN is missing.
All told, I think I’d score this a 2.5.
-dms
Stefan
The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society.
Yes, because there’s nothing the Left loves more than a right-wing, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-liberal authoritarian theocracy. This is why last year you heard so many leftists claim that if McCain won they were moving to Iran…..
Johnny B. Guud
I couldn’t read further than that, my eyes would’ve started bleeding. This insistence by the right that Obama is some sort of leftist ideologue (socialist, Marxist, et al.) continues to boggle the mind.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@John Cole:
Thanks. It’s so fancy that it isn’t even in the dictionary on my shelf.
Merriam-Webster says: economic planning and control by the state.
Oh, and it’s French.
demimondian
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: It means Andy McCarthy wants you to think about Zeppelins (dirigibles) instead of what he’s writing.
Brick Oven Bill
I will now demonstrate the difference between America, and, let’s just say Kenya. President Obama says:
“Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country.”.
BOB says:
“I question the President’s love of this country.”
SpotWeld
Is the symbol for the “liberal illuminati” an inverted rainbow pyramid with an ever vigilant eye on it?
Ash Can
I’m willing to define “peak wingnut” (the written version of it, at least) as writing a screed against the right wing/GOP, going back through the text and replacing every proper noun with its left wing/Dem counterpart and replacing every instance of the word “right” with “left,” and then publishing the results. I’m beginning to think this is just a game with some of these people. They publish something like this, then get on the phone with their friends and say, “You won’t believe what I’m getting paid for this time! These people will never fire me at this rate!”
Chuck Butcher
I’m sure this drivel will play well with the Loon Right, but of what possible use is that? If this stuff isn’t tossed to them on a regular basis they’ll suddenly vote Democratic? It isn’t so much that I object to preaching to the choir, it is the effect it has on the ordinary voter to go that far over the top.
It isn’t like I’d expect good arguments…
Dulcie
@gocart mozart: He had to let everyone know that Obama is blackity, black, black, black, without acually saying Obama’s black, donchaknow.
Mnemosyne
“Dirigiste”? What is that, French? Why is Andy McCarthy using effete French words instead of good old English?
Bill E Pilgrim
@Johnny B. Guud:
It’s just as well because the next thought was basically “…he’s a man of the hard right”.
It’s basically taking Rove’s “attack their strengths” dictum one step further to “just make no sense whatsoever”.
Shalimar
What was McCarthy smoking in the 80s? Is he completely unaware that Saint Ronnie was shipping arms to these same Iranians, so he would have money to support Central American dictatorships. It’s just mind-blowing how ignorant of reality McCarthy is.
SpotWeld
B.O.B.
Shut up
That is all.
cleek
it keeps em coming back to the Corner for their daily dose of invective, which increases the odds of an ad click-through.
they’re selling dumb to the dumbers.
qwerty42
Well, I have to thank McCarthy for getting the word out that Obama is a man of the hard Left. I would have had no idea of that otherwise.
And as for we are seeing less and less freedom in our own country. Well, I mean, isn’t it obvious?
Sullivan routinely uses this description:
“Andy McCarthy, torture supporter”
But what with the hard left causing us to have less and less freedom, what do you do?
Death By Mosquito Truck
Can we just call him Limbaugh’s Stenographer?
El Cid
No one could be more Communist hard left Stalinist than a leader like Obama which gives hundreds of billions of dollars to failed capitalist industries. I think it was Karl Marx who said that when the invisible hand fails, it’s best to hand it as much taxpayer money as is needed to keep it going.
Fwiffo
I’m knocking off half a point for a failure to include pompous references to conservative “intellectuals” (Burkean bells standing athwart history and the like).
Michael
He screwed up the last leap on that Triple Lindy with the Soetero/Birth Certificate failure.
I think that the deductions made were actually pretty mild.
gocart mozart
The beauty of a word like “dirigiste” (yes I had to look it up) is that it is sort of socialist, sort of fascist, and as rusty pointed out, also French: A wingnut hat-trick. It has the added benefit of making him seem all smart and stuff.
Also,
I question Brick Head Bill’s love of country.
Bill E Pilgrim
@El Cid: The invisible handout to the market.
I’m sure I read that somewhere in Marx, yep.
Comrade Dread
http://www.theagitator.com/2009/06/20/prince-georges-county-sheriffs-department-clears-its-own-officers-of-wrongdoing-in-cheye-calvo-raid/
Hallmarks of a free society: cops discover a drug smuggling ring where innocent people have packages of dope delivered which are intercepted by drug dealers. Cops interdict a package of marijuana addressed to an innocent person’s address. Cops do no further investigation, but leave contraband box on innocent person’s door step, then proceed to storm the place with guns blazing and shoot your dogs as they try run away. Cops issue statement saying they not only acted appropriately, but that the ‘mission’ was a success because it got the drugs they had already seized (prior to the raid) off of the streets.
Repeat to absurdity.
All of this perfectly mainstream and accepted by politicians (who refuse to stop it) in the name of keeping order and stopping the ‘rambunctiousness’ that might occur if DFH’s were free to ingest the substance of their choice.
Cyrus
“Dirigiste”: From the French verb diriger meaning “to direct,” in the sense of ongoing hands-on guidance and stuff. In the economic sense, I assume it’s referring to someone who supports a planned (guided) economy or more simply, as others have already said, a socíalist.
He’s lapsing into French to prove his anti-Communist street cred. “Any Johnny-come-lately can bait regular Reds, but I know how to bait a specific kind of Red that hasn’t been seen in the wild since Mitterand! Ha!”
b-psycho
A value of order over societal fluidity used to be associated with another political philosophy. I’m trying to remember what it was called, it’s on the tip of my tongue…something…starts with a C, I think?
Wingnuts can’t even get their fucking stories straight as to what they allegedly believe in. They will use rhetoric that used to be directed at their stated ideological forefathers (that is, the more serious ones, not St. Ronnie or the long-haired hippie in that old book) to attack people they claim are their polar opposites, and think nothing of it.
Their thought goes as deep as that silver coating over scratch-off lottery tickets. Is it any wonder why these people are a laughing stock?
Irony Abounds
Hard to believe Bill Clinton actually appointed this guy to a US Attorney’s post. Whatever wingnut juice he’s been drinking is 100 proof.
PGE
I’m laying odds that within a couple of weeks McCarthy is ranting about Obamas ties to the Illuminati. He’s headed down that road awfully fast. And Lowry’s going to have a hard time deciding whether even that is too insane for NRO. (I’m thinking it’ll fit in just fine.)
Svensker
How does he know Obama is dirigiste by nature? Does he give any evidence of this? Or is this his gut talking? Or some lower part of his anatomy?
Argive
@Brick Oven Bill:
Uh-oh, BOB. You’ve really done it this time. ACORN’s gonna getcha!
The Fairness Doctrine would have been a perfect example of Obama’s fascist tendencies here. Minus 1.0, Andy. Still, good job overall. That’s a decent helping of fail.
qwerty42
@Svensker:
He probably should have said “objectively dirigiste by nature”. That seems to be a popular qualifier in these sorts of rants. I believe it makes an unsubstantiated statement sound as if it has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of all but the … I dunno … “hard left”?
scav
does it really count in diving if all they’re really hoping to do is exactly to cause a splash?
although I do think there are still some dirigible-dirigiste bubble-inflating threads in the screed to be pulled on for giggles’ sake. I somehow feel like a cat with a new ball of yarn to play with only it comes pre-tangled.
Drive By Wisdom
Liberals are such hypocrites. They say they believe in all these things, what our founders believed, but they will only walk the walk for monsters.
We will never see the left march for the freedom fighters in Iran. They will march, fists raised, for Castro, Chavez, Ortega and Hussein in their Che-wear. Their intellectual hero, Pol Pot apologist Chomsky just last week railed about Iraq and Afghanistan and did not even have tepid support for those in Iran. You’d think they wouldn’t need an ANSWER flag and a “green” movement would make their cause fashionable. But, no.
Americanism to Obama is just another word for doing what the rest of the worlds leaders, and the mullahs and their madman will find acceptable. Like Carter, we will see one capitulization after another.
We could decapitate the Iranian regime with our airpower and liberate another 65 Million people – but real change is out of fashion.
Jesus wept – twitter will do more for the Iranian people than the democrat party.
west coast
National Review now makes RedState look sane.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Svensker:
Svensker, you’re adorable!
TenguPhule
BOB believes.
That pretty much says it all.
TenguPhule
Lies!
Redstate remains #1 for true-red retardedness.
TenguPhule
I call spoof.
demimondian
@TenguPhule: Yeah — but pretty good spoof.
Joshua Norton
The reason he doesn’t have a birth certificate is because he’s really a Vulcan and hasn’t been born yet.
cleek
“capitulization” ? is that a portmanteau of capitalism and capitulation?
ex. Obama’s capitulization to the big banks was good news for Goldman-Sachs’ bottom line, this last quarter. by fluffing their balance sheets with taxpayer money, Obama ensured those captains of Wall St would reap huge profits.
jrg
I know! Obama’s even doing a shitty job protecting the sanctity of marriage by not policing people’s naughty parts.
Is there anything in this idiotic screed that is not raw projection?
Svensker
@Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon):
Aw, shucks.
jake 4 that 1
I’m knocking off two points for this vague wimpy statement when he could have gone full on HE WANTS TO TAKE OUR GUNS N’ TRUCK NUTZ!
Tyro
This is Andrew McCarthy, and active person in the “birther” movement, convinced that Obama was not born in the US and a prominent defender of the use of torture. So screw him and his nutcase colleagues.
Death By Mosquito Truck
lmfao
Argive
Yes, of course. Any problem in the world, no matter how complicated or delicate, can be solved with a few Mk. 84 GBU’s. Because there are ALWAYS simple answers to complex questions. I really hope that this was a spoof.
Dr. Loveless
John Cole:
I sure hope so. If they do, I’m looking forward to the many parodies of This awesome commercial from the ’90s.
DIRIGISTE! DIRIGISTE!
Svensker
@Drive By Wisdom:
You are a spoof, aintcha? Cuz if not, you’re waterboarding yourself in the Kool-Aid.
kuvasz
that stuff by mccarthy was the stupidest shit i’ve read in years. it’s like he needs a personal interlocutor to weed out the raw sewage that gets expelled from his brain.
Ked
Meh. This appears to be less a wingularity phenomena than a manifestation of The Big Lie and good old-fashioned Liberal Baiting.
There’s no incomprehensible tangle of logic behind this, nor is there any analysis needed to understand what Andy really means. This is simply straight, calculated slander. (Yes, yes, libel, but I’d distinguish it in the sense that the communal blog is not formally published and it really is a conversational style. So there.) Andy isn’t really postulating some sort of conspiracy, he’s just invoking all the lies that the conservative talkers use to inflame their readers.
So is it absolutely filthy? Oh, yes. But only 0.3 wingularity masses.
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
@Drive By Wisdom:
Good grief, another month, another season, with the same old spoof material?
I see a long, hot, tedious summer ahead.
burnspbesq
@Drive By Wisdom:
Your posting name is half right. That was a drive-by.
RareSanity
@Drive By Wisdom:
lulz…
Is that you Doug?
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Johnny B. Guud: It is really not that mind-boggling. It is laziness mixed with stupidity. Coming up with well-reasoned arguments against Obama and his “policies” such as they are, requires thought, research and a basic understanding of the world and how its institutions work. Your average wingnut just ain’t up for that. It is much easier to throw the poo and repeat as someone already said upthread.
Xenos
@Drive By Wisdom: Ever occur to you to ask some Iranians what the most helpful response from the US would be? Do you have any education or understanding about our history with Iran? How can you be so evidently stupid, but still know how to breath?
Tonal Crow
“McCarthy”? Perfect.
asiangrrlMN
@cleek:
Bwahahahaha! I love a good portmaneau joke.
@scav:
I gotta agree with scav on the call. Andy McCarthy mailed it in on this one.
On the upside, I learned a new word. Dirigiste. Now, I can call myself that when I want to sound all fancy-schmancy elitist instead of using the more common so c i a list.
Broken
@Drive By Wisdom:
You nailed it.
Nothing would help the Iran reform movement more than dropping a few kilotons of high explosive Made-in-America love.
Little Dreamer
@asiangrrlMN:
It’s not a word, it’s just some fantasy reference from the french. Dictionary.com does not list it as a word, and you have to click “reference of dirigiste” to get to an entry for it.
It sure sounds dirty though, huh?
SFAW
When will you Lie-berals learn? As Jonah so masterfully proved, If you’re Left-wing, then you’re objectively fascist. And since fascists are objectively Right-wing, then Osamabama is obviously a Right-winger. And a Left-winger. And a Center midfielder.
And since a dirigiste is apparently both left-wing and right-wing (myself, I don’t know, ‘cept what I reads here), then Osamabama is clearly a left-right-wing, Islamo-communo-Krypto-dirigo-lumbago-Sebago-fascist. (Sorry about the last 2, I couldn’t help myself.)
So, Q.E.D. Also.
noncarborundum
@Little Dreamer:
dirigisme
/diri&ulzh;iz’m/
• noun state control of economic and social matters.
— DERIVATIVES dirigiste adjective.
— ORIGIN French, from diriger ‘to direct’.
— Compact OED
jrosen
“The reason he doesn’t have a birth certificate is because he’s really a Vulcan and hasn’t been born yet.”
Joshua Norton takes the gold!
Digital Amish
@Brick Oven Bill:
The context, BOB, was “no one” who had any credibility with their audience. Sorry, but I think that leaves you out.
asiangrrlMN
@Little Dreamer:
Well, onelook.com says it’s a word. That’s good enough for me! Besides, it’s so purty, I would make it a word, even if it weren’t.
Mike in NC
No fair confusing the Real Americans out there in Limbaughland with fancy new terms like “empathy” and “dirigiste”.
OGB
For whatever reason, I have been unnaturally exposed today to the rights’ opinion on Obama’s Iranian response. Here is what I have taken away from this, in a (wing)nutshell:
Like the Iraqis six years ago, all the Iranian people really want is to be white Christian men. And like George Bush, it is Obama’s sworn duty to use any force necessary in order to help the Iranians reach this goal.
Midnight Marauder
@demimondian:
No.
gocart mozart
Brick Oven Bill will dirigisme your ass if you let him. Don’t let him !eleventy!
Brick head Bill
I like poo!